SPIRITUAL LIFE: There’s no place like home

David and I live with our daughter, her husband, and two little girls, and rare are our complaints. However, even the best togetherness needs a break, so my husband and I escaped to Florida to go bird-watching and seashell hunting.

By Suzette Martinez Standring

The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, MA

By Suzette Martinez Standring

Posted Mar. 3, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Mar 3, 2013 at 3:12 AM

By Suzette Martinez Standring

Posted Mar. 3, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Mar 3, 2013 at 3:12 AM

» Social News

Stress, schedules and obligations, compounded by the Puritan hardship of New England snowstorms, and it all adds up to a slow dance on a killing floor. This native Californian in me forgets why I like living here. I need a memory jogger.

David and I live with our daughter, her husband, and two little girls, and rare are our complaints. However, even the best togetherness needs a break, so my husband and I escaped to Florida to go bird-watching and seashell hunting. Every day I ventured out, camera in hand, plastic bag in pocket. Having no household routine was liberating. Peering through my lens, I honed in, magnified and stopped breathing long enough to snap close-ups of snowy egrets and blue herons. For a week I observed astounding little details. Boy, was I out of practice with stillness.

One dawn in Sanibel, huge flocks of seabirds ascended from the sands, flew boomerang-style, and resettled a few yards away. I was reminded of Matthew 6:26-27, “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”

True enough. In fact, I sometimes say, “This (fill in the blank) is lopping five years off my life span!” So I was in pleasurable study mode, and guess what? No matter where you live, it’s easy to get jaded and step to the relentless beat of should, must, ought to, and what if. After a week in Florida, I realized all the richness of anhingas, pelicans and egrets aplenty are ho-hum to the locals. Only fresh eyes can claim newfound wonder in alligator sightings and stilt-legged birds. It’s a matter of refocus.

Along the ocean, I walked for hours searching for the intact whelk, the occasional conch. Lots of red and white shells filled my bag. One has striped flounces. Another is dashed in red lines, while some have ray-like patterns. How do these same, small beauties reveal such individuality? They’re like us. We only just seem alike, until we are discovered, each worthy of a heartfelt ooh and ah.

Am I saying a vacation away is a problem solver? No, but time alone in new surroundings helps to refocus one’s macro lens on life. Even an hour somewhere new can refresh.

Back at home, bare branches were outstretched, stark above white snow banks. Houses were alight and evening streets twinkled. I missed Milton and the tumble/jumble of family life. Upon arrival, my granddaughter Bella said: “I miss the smells in the kitchen when I come home from school and you’re here.”

In that instant, I realized I need to be needed, and no amount of free time and vacation could ever replace a sense of purpose and belonging. This morning, the treetops turned golden in the brief sunshine before fading once again to white silver. I shouted: “Where’s my camera?” Through the macro lens, I held my breath to capture its perfection, and my memory was jogged as to why I live here.